Hyderabad: A total of 88 constituencies across 12 states and one union territory will go to polls in the second phase on April 26. Among the contestants include 75 candidates who have experience ranging from one to seven terms as parliamentarians.
Seven-time MP: In this list, two candidates possess the highest experience of seven terms. They are Congress candidate Kodikunnil Suresh, contesting from Kerala's Mavelikkara and BJP's Virendra Kumar from Madhya Pradesh's Tikamgarh.
Five-time MP: Then there are two candidates, who are five-time MPs and both hail from Bihar. They are Congress's Tariq Anwar (Katihar) and independent candidate from Purnia, Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav.
Four-time MP: Next comes, five contestants who are four-time MPs including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, aiming for his second victory from Kerala's Wayanad, is up against BJP state president K Surendran. He had shifted to Wayanad in 2019 Lok Sabha polls after being defeated by Smriti Irani in Amethi. Wayanad is considered to be a Congress stronghold.
The others with similar experience are Congress's K Muraleedharan from Kerala's Thrissur, RSP's NK Premachandran from Kerala's Kollam, BJP's Ganesh Singh from Madhya Pradesh's Satna and BJP's Dushyant Singh from Rajasthan's Jhalawar-Baran.
Three-time MP: Coming to three-time MPs, there are eight such contestants include former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor, up against Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar in Kerala's Thiruvanthapuram.
The others are namely Congress's Anto Antony from Kerala's Pathanamthitta, MK Raghavan from Kerala's Kozhikode and DK Suresh from Karnataka's Bangalore Rural, BJP's PC Mohan from Bangalore Central, Shiv Sena's Jadhav Prataprao Ganpatrao from Maharashtra's Buldhana, IUML's ET Mohammed Basher from Kerala's Malappuram and Janata Dal (United) candidate Giridhari Yadav from Bihar's Banka.
Two-time MP: A total of 20 candidates are two-time MPs. Among which, the prominent faces are Congress's KC Venugopal (Alappuzha) and BJP's Gajendra Singh Shekhawat (Jodhpur), Om Birla (Kota), Hema Malini (Mathura) and Shoba Karandlaje (Bangalore North) and Janata Dal (Secular's) HD Kumaraswamy (Mandya).
One-time MP: This apart, there are 38 one-time MPs.
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